Cultivation
What can HR learn from notorious cults?You’ve heard that culture eats strategy for breakfast. It’s a slightly more quotable way of saying your best-laid plans are irrelevant if nobody is on the same page.
But even companies with reputations for excellent culture face obstacles. Turnover, productivity issues, employee relations issues. Sure, they might be diminished, but they still rear their ugly head.
Actually, there’s a type of organisation out there that succeeds in bypassing all these issues. It’s time for you to forget ‘culture’ and start thinking ‘cult’.
A good cult knows a thing or two about retention and building shared purpose.
Lesson 1: Hire for skills, not culture
If you’ve ever recruited, you’ll know that sometimes you’ll overlook someone with perfect skills for another candidate, if you feel that other candidate will be a superior culture fit.
Problem is, we’re not always great at predicting who will get along with who. Perhaps that’s why cults approach this in the opposite direction. A person doesn’t have to be a good fit to join — instead, they’re moulded to fit during their ‘onboarding’.
Members of a cult come from many diverse backgrounds, but come together to work in harmony. Sure, that harmony might be kooky and delusional, but that’s not relevant here.
According to the Cultic Studies Journal, “Contrary to a popular misconception that cult members are “crazy,” research and clinical evidence strongly suggests that most cult members are relatively normal. They include the young, the middle-aged, elderly, the wealthy, the poor, the educated, and the uneducated from every ethnic and religious background.”
Which suggests that they find them normal, and make them crazy afterwards. Brilliant.
How do they do it? Organisations such as the Unification Church (or the ‘Moonies’) help steer mindsets by using something called ‘love bombing’. According to the web site Cultwatch,
When you first go to a cult they will practice “love bombing”, where they arrange instant friends for you. It will seem wonderful, how could such a loving group be wrong! But you soon learn that if you ever disagree with them, or ever leave the cult then you will lose all your new “friends”.
A bit like getting a buddy, a mentor or joining the Squash Club at work, then?
So instead of fixating on finding people with the right mindset, HR could do with looking more closely at how to mould people with the best skillset into having a more beneficial mindset. This method leaves less to chance, and can also mean better qualified hires.
It may or may not be necessary to open a mysterious ranch in the middle of nowhere to get the full effect.
Lesson 2: Rubbish the opposition
One of the key characteristics of a cult is their rejection of other comparable bodies, i.e. social ties that make claim to their members’ time. This can lead to cults encouraging members to reject friends, family, government, and so on.
In black and white terms, the cult stresses its own positive aspects while also making big noises about the negative parts of the alternatives. This leads cultists to be more reliant on their cult, and devote more of their time to it, often to the exclusion of any previous relationships.
For example, David Koresh of the Branch Davidians gained a big advantage in setting up his organisation in direct opposition to the US Government.
For HR, this means two things: firstly, stressing the positive nature of your own company is no bad thing. Saying something enough tends to make it so, and taking the time to sing the praises of your own company regularly can lead employees to see it as more valuable and worthwhile.
Preferably not to the exclusion of their family and friends. But hey, whatever works.
Secondly, there is value in (internally) criticising your rivals. People gather a sense of “Us vs. Them” which can reinforce a healthy group dynamic and give employees a core belief which they all share, and which can override any personal differences.
So if you have any clear rivals in your field, make sure to be saying mean things about them.
Psychiatrist and cult expert Professor Arthur Deikman concluded that “Devaluing the outsider is… preliminary to harming others…. Whether the conflict is between nations or individuals, the attacker devalues the victim prior to the violent act…. The person you devalue becomes easier to kill.”
In this case, murder is equivalent to a go-getter mentality. Probably.
Lesson 3: Dial up the leadership
Do any of your leaders come to work in a grey suit and a beige tie? Was a dishcloth voted your most inspirational employee?
It’s just possible you have a leadership problem. Luckily if there’s one thing a cult never lacks, it’s a charismatic leader. Vital to the creation and perpetuation of a cult, there are the Jim Joneses and Charlie Manson’s of this world.
One psychology encyclopedia explains: “The Rev. Sun Myung Moon, Guru Maharaj Ji, the late L. Ron Hubbard, the late Rev. Jim Jones, David Berg… were convinced by their sense of mission and the correctness of their formulas for salvation. Each is or was supremely self-confident.”
They may not have been nice people, but their names are remembered for their ability to inspire others, even if their cults disappeared decades ago, because their supreme confidence and to convince others of their vision lingers.
Interestingly, it was revealed in 2013 that Charles Manson garnered a lot of his appeal from studying Dale Carnegie’s classic How To Win Friends And Influence People.
We’re not saying you need to teach courses in getting bug-eyed and evangelical, but that when it comes to cultivating (hah) dedication in your employees, feeling like the person in charge has a good handle on everything is a good start, and to do that they need to believe it too.
Oozing charisma and charm from every pore doesn’t hurt either.
HR can take a prominent role in fostering leadership, and certainly should, given how beneficial powerful leadership can be. In this and the other examples above, we recommend drinking the Kool-Aid.
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